1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of speech processing and, more particularly, to establishing speech bookmarks in a voice user interface (VUI) using a speech recognition engine and acoustically generated baseforms.
2. Description of the Related Art
A voice user interface (VUI) is an interface of an audio input/output device through which users can interact with computing systems through voice/speech platform in order to initiate a self service application. There are currently two main variants of VUIs, natural language VUIs and menu driven VUIs. A natural language VUI uses natural language understanding (NLU) technologies to accept free-form voice input from a user, to convert this input to text, to determine an intended meaning for the input, and to map this meaning to one or more programmatic actions. Current NLU technologies are proprietary and based on vendor-specific technologies instead of open standards, consume tremendous amounts of computing resources, and often have trouble correctly mapping meaning to specific software elements of interest. A menu driven VUI uses a hierarchy of menus, each having many user selectable options which can branch a user to different menus and/or can trigger a related programmatic action to execute.
In a menu driven VUI, navigating to a desired option can require a user to traverse a nested hierarchy of menus, until a desired option is available. Users can become quickly frustrated with delays incurred while navigating the dialog menus. Conventional navigation of menus results in longer than necessary communication sessions which consume infrastructure resources such as available communication ports and ability to handle additional calls. At present, no known automated response system or component permits users of a VUI to establish speech bookmarks to a user established point in a menu hierarchy.